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Chiquita
Beautiful! Sire, you may say so. Thar isn’t her match in the country.
Is thar, old gall—Chiquita, my darling, my beauty!
Feel of that neck, sir—thar’s velvet! Who! Stady—ah, will you, you vixen!
Whoa! I say. Jack, trot her out; let the gentleman look at her paces.
Morgan!—she ain’t nothing else, and I’ve got the papers to prove it.
Sired by Chippewa Chief, and twelve hundred dollars won’t buy her.
Briggs of Tuolumne owned her. Did you know Briggs of Tuolumne?
Busted hisself in White Pine, and blew out his brains down in ‘Frisco!
Hedn’t no savey, hed Briggs. Thar, Jack! That’ll do—quit that foolin’!
Nothing’ to what she kin do, when she’s got her work cut out before her.
Hosses is hosses, you know, and likewise, too, jockeys is jockeys:
And ‘tain’t ev’ry man as can ride as knows what a hoss has got in him.
Know the old ford on the Fork, that nearly got Flanigan’s leaders?
Nasty in daylight, you bet, and a mighty rough ford in low water!
Well, it ain’t six weeks ago that me and the Jedge and his nevey
Struck for that ford in the night, in the rain, and the water all round us;
Up to our flanks in the gulch, and Rattlesnake Creek just a-bilin’,
Not a plank left in the dam, and nary a bridge on the river.
I had the grey, and the Jedge has his roan, and his nevey, Chiquita;
And after us trundled the rocks just loosed from the top of the canyon.
Lickity, lickity, switch, we came to the ford, and Chiquita
Buckled right down to her work, and, afore I could yell to her rider,
Took water just at the ford, and there was the Jedge and me standing,
And twelve hundred dollars of hoss-flesh afloat, and a-driftin’ to thunder!
Would ye b’lieve it! That night that hoss, that ‘ar filly, Chiquita,
Walked herself into her stall, and stood there, all quiet and dripping:
Clean as a beaver or rat, with nary a buckle of harness,
Just as she swam the Fork—that hoss, that ar’ filly, Chiquita.
That’s what I call a hoss! And—What did you say?—oh, the nevey!
Drownded, I reckon—leastways, he never kem back to deny it.
Ye see the darned fool had no seat; ye couldn’t have made him a rider;
And then, ye know, boys will be boys, and hosses—well hosses is hosses!
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